traveling with you. And I don't know where else I'd go.'
The other two exchanged looks, but neither of them showed great surprise at Mark's revelation. Mark thought that Ben actually looked somewhat relieved.
Barbara said: 'We were talking about you — Mark — and we kind of thought that something like that was going on. Anyway, your leaving us now wouldn't help us any. We're going to need you, or someone, when we get to the fair, to help us run the show. And if we still manage to get a hunting contract we're going to need all kinds of help.'
Ben cleared his throat. 'I know for a fact that the Duke wanted to get his hands on Nestor, too. I don't know exactly why, but Nestor was worried about it. It made him nervous to cut through the Duke's territory, but we didn't have much choice about that if we were going to get down to Sir Andrew's from where we were up north.'
And here they were at Sir Andrew's now, or very nearly so. Just ahead, vague in the twilight, was the important intersection that the castle had been built to overlook. And just beyond that intersection, which at the moment was empty of traffic, a side road wound up to the castle, and to the broad green where the fair sprawled like something raised by enchantment in the beginning twilight. The fairgrounds were coming alive with torches against the dusk. They stirred with a multitude of distant voices, and the sounds of competing musicians.
As the wagon creaked its way toward the crossroads, Mark left his seat and went back under the cover. He had agreed with the others that it would be wise for him to stay out of sight as much as feasible until they knew whether or not the Duke was actively seeking him this far south. He felt the change in the wheels' progress when Ben turned off the main road. Then. looking forward through a small opening in the cover, Mark saw that people were already trotting or riding out from the fairgrounds to meet the wagon when it was still a couple of hundred meters down the side road that wound up from the intersection.
One of those riding in the lead was the marshal of the fair, a well-dressed man identifiable by the colors of his jerkin, Sir Andrew's orange and black. The marshal silently motioned for the wagon to follow him, and rode ahead, guiding it through the busy fairgrounds to a reserved spot near the center. Mark, staying in the wagon out of sight, watched the blurred bright spots of torches move past, glowing through the wagon cover on both sides. Sounds surrounded the wagon too — of voices, music, animals, applause. Barbara had thought that the end of daylight would signal the fair's closing for the day, but obviously she had been wrong.
When the marshal had led them to their assigned site, he rode close to the wagon and leaned from his saddle to peer inside. Mark went on with what he was doing, feeding the captive dragon from the replenished frog- crock — if the authorities here were really going to search for him, he would have no hope of hiding. But the marshal only stared at Mark blankly for a moment, then withdrew his head.
Mark heard the official's voice asking: 'Where's Nestor?'
Ben gave the answer they had planned: 'If he's not here somewhere already, he'll be along in a day or two. He was dickering over some new animals. A team, I mean.'
'Looks like you could use one. Well, Sir Andrew wants to see him, mind you tell him as soon as he gets here. There's a hunting contract to be discussed.'
Barbara: 'Yessir, we'll remind him soon as we see him. It shouldn't be long now.'
The marshal rode away, shouting at someone else about garbage to be cleaned up. The three who had just arrived in the wagon immediately got busy, unpacking, tending to the animals, and setting up the tent in which they meant to exhibit the dragon. Their assigned space was a square of trodden grass about ten meters on a side, and the wagon had to be maneuvered into the rear of this space in order to make room for the big tent at the front. Their neighbor on one side was the pavilion of a belly-dancer, with a crowd-drawing preliminary show that went on every few minutes out front-Ben's attention kept wandering from his tasks, and once he tried to feed a frog to a loadbeast. In the exhibitor's space on the far side, a painted lean-to advertised and presumably housed a supposedly magical fire-eater. The two remaining sides of the square were open, bordering grassy lanes along which traffic could pass and customers, if any, could approach. Along these lanes a few interested spectators were already gathering, to watch the dragon-folk get settled. They had hoped to be able to set up after dark, unwatched, but there was no hope of that now. Nor of Mark's remaining unobserved, so he did not try.
The tent in which the dragon was to be shown was made of some fabric lighter and tougher than any that Mark had ever seen before, and gaudily decorated with painted dragons and mysterious symbols. Ben told Mark that the cloth had come from Karmirblur, somewhere five thousand kilometers away at the other end of the world.
As soon as the tent had been put up and secured, and a small torch mounted on a stand inside for light, the three exhibitors carried the caged dragon into it without uncovering the cage; the bystanders were going to have to pay something if they wanted to catch even the merest glimpse. The three proprietors were also planning to keep at least one of their number in or beside the wagon as much as possible. All obvious valuables were removed from the wagon, some to be carried in purses, others to be buried right under the dragon's cage inside the tent. But Nestor's sword remained within the vehicle, concealed under false floorboards that in turn were covered with a scattering of junk. Barbara, at least, still nursed hopes of being able to put the sword to use eventually, even if Nestor never rejoined the crew. Several times during the last few days Ben had argued the subject with her.
He would be silent for a while, then turn to her with a lost, small-boy look. 'Barb, I don't see how we're going to hunt dragons without Nestor. It was hard enough with him.'
Barbara's mobile face would show that she was giving the objection serious consideration, even if she had answered it before, not many hours ago. 'You know best about that, Ben, the actual hunting. Maybe we could hire some other hunters to help us?'
'Wouldn't be safe. If we do that they'll find out about the magic in the sword. Then they'll try to steal it.' Despite the fact that it had taken Ben himself more than long enough to notice. But Mark didn't think that Ben was really slow-witted, as he appeared to be at first. It was just that he spent so much of his mental time away somewhere, maybe thinking about things like minstrelsy and verse.
At last, after several arguments, or debates, Barbara had given in about the hunting, at least temporarily. 'Well then, if we can't, we can't. If Nestor never shows up at Sir Andrew's, we'll just act more surprised than anyone else, and wonder aloud what could have happened to him. Then we'll wait around at Sir Andrew's for a little while after the fair's over, and if Nestor still isn't there we'll pack up and head south and look for another fair. At least it'll be warmer down south in the winter. Anyway, I don't suppose Sir Andrew would be eager to hire us as hunters without Nestor.'
'I don't suppose,' Ben agreed with some relief. Then he added, as if in afterthought: 'Anyway, if Sir Andrew takes me on as a minstrel, you'll be going south without me.'
He looked disappointed when Barbara agreed to that without any comment or hesitation.
Mark didn't have any comment to make either. He suspected that if Nestor didn't appear, Barbara meant to sell the sword if she couldn't find a way to use it. He, Mark, would just have to decide for himself when the time came what he wanted to try to do about that. This sword wasn't his. But he felt it was a link, of sorts, to his own blade, about the only link that he still had. If Nestor came back at all, it would be with the idea of recovering his own sword, whatever other plans he might have.
Of course, he might not have Mark's sword with him when he showed up. And if he did have it, he might not be of a mind to give it back.
Any way Mark looked at the current situation, his chances of recovering his sword, his inheritance, looked pretty poor.
Three hours after the dragon-people had arrived, the carnival was showing some signs of winding down for the night, though the grounds were by no means completely quiet as yet. Barbara still had the dragonexhibit open, though business had slowed down to the point where Ben was able to put on his plumed hat, collect his lute, and announce to his partners that he was going out to try his hand at minstrelsy.
Mark's help was not needed at the showtent for the moment either, and he had retired to the wagon, where he meant to get something to eat, meanwhile casually sitting guard over the concealed sword.
The inside of the wagon looked about twice as big now, with almost everything moved out of it. From where Mark was sitting he could just see the entrance to the tent, which had been erected at right angles to the wagon. Barbara had just finished conducting one small group of paying customers into the tent to see the dragon and out again, and she was presently chatting with a prospective first member of the next group. This potential customer was a chunkily-built little man, evidently of some importance, for he was dressed in fancier clothes than any Mark had seen since the seneschal, the Duke's cousin, went down.
Mark was chewing on a piece of boiled fowl — Ben had laid in some food from a nearby concession before he
